


Something That Remembers Being Human

by Hmpf_MacSlow



Category: The Laundry Files - Charles Stross
Genre: Anagnorisis, Angst, Complicity, Doing the Wrong Thing for the Right Reasons, Ethics, Gen, Guilt, I‘m going to need it again in the future, PHANG syndrome, Religion, Slippery Slopes, Suicidal Ideation, Vampires, War, authoritarianism, doing the right thing for the wrong reasons, monsters discussing ethics, people arguing ethics and politics with Bob, post-The-Labyrinth-Index, psychological deformations of the spy lifestyle, so much anagnorisis, that‘s a tag now, the Laundry as a cult
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-08-14
Updated: 2019-08-29
Packaged: 2020-08-23 13:43:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,955
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20243806
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hmpf_MacSlow/pseuds/Hmpf_MacSlow
Summary: A series of loosely connected vignettes and scenes looking at the fallout from what happened to Pete inThe Labyrinth Index- and looking at the Laundry itself.





	1. Salt

**Author's Note:**

> 1.) If you‘re not here for vampire angst, please come back <strike>tomorrow</strike> next chapter for monsters discussing ethics (badly).
> 
> 2.) Doesn‘t TLI say that the kid is four/that Pete has been with the Laundry for four years? I‘m pretty sure it does. I‘m also pretty sure that that‘s completely impossible, because it doesn’t match what we know of Bob and Mo’s timeline. Here I’ll be going with a “short chronology”, in which Pete’s been with the Laundry for slightly less than two years. Just go with the flow, and blame Forecasting Ops.
> 
> 3.) In the notes for my previous fic I announced that in my “next” story I would rename Bob. This is not the story I meant. (See end notes...)
> 
> 4.) This was written very quickly (for my standards), and then ground to a halt, very painfully, in the editing process. I would like to apologise profusely to my utterly fantastic beta, QuoteMyFoot, and also to L. (let me know which name you’d like here!) who gave me some invaluable feedback to which I didn’t reply properly although it GAVE ME LIFE, because the twin whammy of laptop harddisk death and total work overload hit me immediately afterwards, with the latter lasting until a couple of days ago.

_“We fight on so that something that remembers being human might survive.”_  
\- The Senior Auditor

*  
***  
*

He should be dead – not here in a hospital fallen out of time; not breathing, thinking.

Not _hungry_.

*

_His spine breaking, softer things rupturing as Jon holds his head with PHANG strength, turns it, quickly, until he is facing backwards although his body is not. He crumples, feeling the impact of head on ground but nothing else. His face is sticky with Derek‘s blood. Breathing is difficult. The commanding presence has withdrawn but is watching still, from the back of his mind._

_He is going to die now._

_Thank God._

*

There are more than 50,382 grains of salt in the salt shaker that comes with the kitchenette. He counts them with a needle-focus that he never had for numbers: fifty-thousand-three-hundred-and-eighty-three, fifty-thousand-three-hundred-and-eighty-four, as if numbers could fill the spaces where memory moves, fifty-thousand-three-hundred-and-eighty-five, like grains of salt fill the little screw-top jar.

*

Before they bundled him off into an ambulance with blacked-out windows outside the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, Mhari grabbed his upper arm, nails digging into his flesh like teeth.

“Pete.“ Her voice was low, urgent.

He didn’t look up.

“Pete. Look at me. Please?”

He raised his head reluctantly. Her face was drawn. She didn’t say that she was sorry, aware already that he knew. Not many hours earlier she had worn him like a suit.

“I want you to know. . .” She swallowed. There was a watery shine to her eyes. “If you want to. . . end it. Nobody is. . . We’re not going to stop you.”

She still had his arm in a death grip; became aware of it, let go, then reconsidered and took his hand, more gently.

“I am _personally_ going to make sure that nobody stops you. That’s a promise.”

Bleak gratitude made him sag.

“But, Pete, listen. Don’t do it on impulse. Okay? Think it through. Make sure that it really is what you. . . _need_ to do. Please?”

His gaze was drifting away from hers.

“Can you promise me that?”

Amazed, he found that he still could cry.

*

His room is a small bedsit furnished in forlorn 1950s relics. Someone has helpfully bricked up the only window, doing a thorough job of mortaring every gap. They haven’t bothered painting over it. Aesthetics are a tertiary concern at St. Hilda’s.

On the second day Mhari visits. She has talked to Sandy, she says, informed her that Pete was wounded in action, details classified.

She leaves him a small tube of blood.

“Terminal bowel cancer. 87 years old. Days to live. You’ll be shortening her life a teensy bit, but she’s had a good run, and she definitely won’t notice.” she says. “Cross my heart and swear to die.”

He wants to tell her to take it back to London with her.

She puts it in the fridge.

The hunger is a sucking emptiness, a black hole at his core.

He tips over the salt shaker and counts to sixty-thousand-three-hundred-and-seventy-four.

*

In the months of uneasy wonder after Pete's conscription Bob seemed to want to apologise to him a lot.

The apology didn’t always make it into words. Pete wasn’t sure if Bob was entirely aware of it. No matter; his body telegraphed it every time they met in the corridors of the New Annex, or in the canteen, or on those rare occasions when Pete, bearing bad coffee, would seek him out in his shoebox office with some question or other on the arcana of Laundry bureaucracy.

Pete had found it baffling; a little bit endearing. Slightly out of character, perhaps.

*

On the third day he writes to the bishop.

There are no computers at St. Hilda’s; no phones, not even the analogue kind. The paper a nurse hands him is thin, fibrous, slightly yellowing, as if the last time the hospital ordered office supplies was during post-war rationing.

The nurses know that he hasn’t been feeding. He smells their terror when they keep their distance; smells it still when they get close – too close, throwing him sidelong glances that linger, too long, with something like yearning.

Horrified – no: _mortified_ \- he wonders what his parasites are making them see.

He is ashamed of his shame: a moral category error, all about _what people might think_. His concern, his _only_ concern, should be _keeping them safe_.

Underneath it all is a predatory pleasure that doesn’t care about feelings or morals; that is primal, and terrifyingly pure.

He writes: “I can’t share classified information but I am now confident that I am – and I realise that this is a strange word from a modern, enlightened minister – _damned_. Please believe me that my use of the term is thoroughly considered.

“Under the circumstances, I cannot find it in my conscience to remain part of the body of the Church. Please do not try to change my mind on this, or make any attempt to “save” me/my soul. I am, truly and utterly, beyond help.”

*

He sleeps.

He is a realist in dreams: there are no welcoming summer skies, only a blanket of clouds, a distant hint of brightness behind thick grey. He looks up at it. He is very cold.

“I didn’t do it!” he shouts. “It’s not my fault!”

He isn’t sure what exactly it is that he is denying.

The clouds pull apart. Light bursts forth, a sudden, silent violence.

It envelops him in loving flame.

*

Once or twice a therapist sits with him, for an hour or so, a perfunctory effort for any of a number of very good reasons. He remembers Mhari’s promise, stares at the wall behind the woman’s white-coated shoulder. She finally gets up and leaves, barely hiding her relief.

When she's gone he writes to Sandy.

He doesn’t make it past the first line.

*

Dreaming:

Sandy, dishevelled from hours of labour, sweat-drenched hair plastered to her forehead; the tiny head crowning between her thighs. Him thinking vaguely upwards, in baffled awe: ‘Pretty strange way You came up with to bring about more of us, really.’ He presses Sandy’s hand tight.

Cut: he is holding his daughter. There is an element of surprise to his joy, as if he hadn’t expected the experience to hew quite so close to the textbook. The infant twitches, jerks a pudgy arm, looks at him with eyes that he knows cannot resolve his face yet. She smells warmly of newborn, and of Sandy, and _something else --_

He is teeth and thirst.

*

He wakes and vomits bile onto the ancient linoleum beside the bed.

*

Later, he sits at the small table. It is night, or not.

He tips over the salt shaker and counts.


	2. Monster Club

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Monsters discussing ethics!
> 
> ETA Sept. 13: Couldn't leave well enough alone and, what do you know, ended up making significant improvements to Bob. (He's still a shit, though. BUT HIS DIALOGUE WORKS BETTER NOW, YAY!) Some other improvements, too.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For this fic I‘m assuming that Pete does not yet know that “Eater of Souls” is a literal thing. I think if he did it would show in the canon text, in small but noticeable ways.

There's a knock on the door.

It's daytime; the nurse who brings him breakfast has been and gone. (Nothing more compromising than factory-farmed eggs, which he's wolfed down, as ravenous after as before).

The knocking repeats. Then, the door opens a crack. A head pokes through.

“Pete?"

He stares at the grains of salt on the table.

"Pete."

_25,496 . . . 25,497 . . . 25,497 . . . 25,49 . . ._ \-- _Fuck._

He looks up. Bob stands by the door, shoulders hunched, face rumpled with tension, worry. Guilt is pouring off him. It’s a replay of a scene from two years ago, only this time, Pete understands.

"Hey." Bob sounds as hesitant as Pete has ever heard him.

Pete opens his mouth; finds his voice gone. He hasn’t spoken since he asked for paper the day before. He looks down at the table, resists the temptation to start counting. He takes his time sweeping all of the salt back into its little glass receptacle, using a piece of antique paper to corral stray grains. Midway through he hears Bob shift uneasily on his feet. As he screws the salt shaker‘s lid back on Bob pulls out the other chair and sits.

Pete clears his throat. “I told them no visitors.”

“I know.”

Pete manages a weak glare.

“What is this then, an intervention?” He sounds petulant to his own ears.

“Dunno. Do you need one?”

“Mhari promised –”

“Uhm. Yeah. I didn’t exactly tell her I was coming here. Well, I guess she probably knows, now. They weren’t sure who’d win a pissing contest between a Laundry DSS and a member of the House of Lords who heads her own shiny new agency, so they phoned around. Mhari’s gonna bite my head off. But that’s ok, I’m pretty sure I'm indigestible. – I’m babbling, aren’t I?”

“A little,” Pete confirms, feebly. Something inside him unclenches, because this is Bob, Mo’s husband, whom he has known a decade or more – not the closest of friends but familiar: Bob, being predictably crap at visiting a suicidal friend in the hospital.

Pete wants nothing more than to relax into the normality of that.

Yet Bob’s nerdiness only accounts for one part of his awkwardness. Pete’s counselling instinct – ingrained, no matter how absurd the circumstances – latches on.

“It’s not your fault,” he says, making his voice soft, which isn’t difficult.

“It is, actually.” Bob’s bitterness is well-worn - so thoroughly resigned that it startles Pete right off his script.

“But it isn’t!” he protests.

(What he should be saying is, “Why do you feel that way?” Or something to that effect.)

“Yes. It is.”

“Bob. C’mon, we’ve been over this. It _really_ isn’t.”

Bob’s eyebrows draw together in mild annoyance. “Yes it is! What is this, a [Monty Python sketch](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ohDB5gbtaEQ)?”

“Only if you keep saying ‘yes it is’.”

Bob snorts.

“I’m serious.” Pete insists. “You mustn’t blame yourself for. . . this. You were trying to save the world! You _did_ postpone the apocalypse. Or something very much _like_ the apocalypse, anyway. I didn’t volunteer - but if I had known, I would have. You know that.”

He has made this argument to Bob before, with conviction, a couple of times.

He hopes it is still true, now.

Bob gives a pained grunt. “Pete. With all due respect for your admirable. . . forgiveness _reflex_ – absolution really isn’t what I’m here for. It’s. . .” He pauses, caught in a moment of tense introspection. “I’ve. . . been there. Kind of. So. . . if you need to talk, or. . . Well.”

His offer made, however inarticulately, Bob sits back and wraps his arms around himself.

Pete sits staring at him, touched, vaguely mystified. Bob is not a person who will bare his soul to many. Yet what, exactly, is it that has been revealed? When Pete tries to meet his eyes, Bob briefly, reflexively, looks away – then, with a visible effort, makes eye contact again.

Some years ago Bob disappeared for several months and Mo grew extremely cagey about explaining his absence. Pete has pieced together, since, that there had been a health crisis of some sort, perhaps physical, perhaps mental, perhaps both.

Is that it, then: has Bob, too, spent some time under St. Hilda’s brand of suicide watch?

Suddenly - much belatedly - Pete notes an _absence_, the lack of a scent whose new ubiquity still feels alien: Bob is the first visitor since Mhari who doesn’t reek of fear.

It makes Pete at home in his body in a way he hasn’t felt since Washington.

Of course. Bob is a DSS – a rank that nobody has been able to explain to Pete, except for the possibly only half-jocular claim that it’s short for “Deeply Scary Sorcerer”. Bob has gone up against Schiller and what was behind him once before; against God knows what else, in a decade plus of service. He has, during that decade, acquired a sinister-sounding nickname that people are even less eager to explain than his rank. Alex, well on his way to becoming a fairly scary sorcerer himself, is properly terrified of him. And every night, Bob goes home to Mo, who. . .

The hunger that for days has been a scream at the back of Pete’s mind has gone quiescent - as if the part of him that didn’t exist a few days ago has decided that he is not, right now, in the presence of food.

Pete’s scalp crawls. New as he is to his senses he can’t be entirely sure, yet an instinct he is just as new to tells him that on some plane that has nothing to do with the physical Bob smells. . . _dead_.

He seeks Bob’s eyes, now, with the full acuity of his new senses. Sees. . . only Bob.

Then –

_It is a maw it is an infinite emptiness it is hungry always hungry it is a dark vast presence watching –_

Pete recoils, knocking over his chair – scrambles up, back, _ away _ from the thing across the room.

He comes to, seconds or minutes later, his back against the wall, hand held out as if that could ward off the monster. His breath comes in gasps.

“What – what –” . . . _are you? (No. Obvious.)_

“Eater of Souls,” Pete whispers.

He can still sense the presence behind Bob’s face.

Bob sighs. “Sorry. There’s just no non-horrifying way of doing this.”

Then there is only Bob.

Pete stands, trying to calm his breathing.

“Why don’t you sit down again?” Bob suggests. “It’s no more dangerous than it was a minute ago.”

That is as dubious as comfort gets.

Pete picks up the chair, gingerly. Rights it. Sits down. He looks at Bob, sees a human, familiar face. There is some degree of pity on it, and perhaps regret.

Pete tries to look past the face, not at the thing that he knows is behind it but at the man who must be in there, too.

He realises that he still has no idea what it is he is looking at.

_Eater of Souls._

“What. . . “ His voice catches. – _. . . is it that you. . . _do_?_

That implies that it is something that Bob _does_ do. That seems like a big, perhaps unfair assumption. Pete thinks of the little glass vial that sits, untouched, in the fridge.

“What. . . does it mean. . . eating souls?” he says, very carefully.

“It means what it says on the tin.”

“I’m sorry, but. . . _what does that mean_?”

Bob takes a while to reply, this time.

“It _feels _like eating. Bite – chew - swallow. ‘Cept all the organs involved are purely notional.”

Pete nods, although this is beyond comprehension.

“What happens to the. . . “ – _victim_ – “. . . person, on whom this. . . notional act of eating is performed?”

Bob very deliberately meets his eyes. “They die. It’s instant. Painless, as far as I can tell. So there’s that to be said for it.”

Pete forces himself not to look away, not to let his horror show.

“It’s something you’ve done. Something you _do_.”

Again Bob meets his eyes. “Yes.”

“. . . Something you_ have_ to do?” _Like me?_

Bob inserts a pause at this point, in which he uncrosses his arms, releasing himself from their tight embrace. He shifts his shoulders, looks at his hands as if he doesn’t know where to put them, shoves one of them under his thigh, then pulls it out again.

“I don’t know. I haven’t ever gone. . . _hungry_ for long enough to find out. Work has a way of landing me in situations where. . . you know.”

He looks up. “Until fairly recently I would have said that at least this way, it’s clean. _Precise. _No collateral damage. I always hated that about guns: too damn easy to fuck up, hit someone who’s just standing in the wrong place.”

He looks down at his hands which lie open in his lap.

“But I came by this. . . skill. . . quite suddenly. The only person who could train me is dead. Discorporated, what-have-you. I’m going on instinct and guesswork. Sometimes that gets people killed. People other than the people I. . . meant. . . to kill.”

He grimaces, a sickly half-grin. “Mind you, most times it makes me puke up my guts, afterwards, no matter if it’s someone I meant to eat or not.”

_Someone I meant to eat. _Said without a hitch.

_How many? _Pete wants to ask. Does not.

They sit, silent, two monsters looking at one another.

“How can you live with it?” Pete asks, tonelessly, after a long while.

Bob snorts. “Keeping too busy to think is good. Easily accomplished, too – only good thing about living through Case Nightmare Green. As for the evenings. . .” He shrugs. “Booze helps. Somewhat.”

“. . . Jesus, Bob.”

Bob raises an eyebrow.

“He objects to His name being taken in vain, not to being called upon in our extremity. Our situation’s certainly extreme enough. . . Granted, I probably no longer have the right.”

Bob peers at him, curious. “You still believe?”

Pete considers it. “I think so.” More resolutely: “Yeah.”

He knows, though, that he is far from done thinking about it.

To distract himself he says, “You know, this really isn’t how I imagined having the existence of the soul proved to me.”

Bob gives a weak, semi-amused snort.

_So is that it?_ Pete thinks, despairingly. _Am I joking about this now?_

A thought hits him. “Can you. . . _see_ it, when you look at me? Is it like. . . “ He finds he cannot say it.

“Like what you saw when you looked at me?” Bob helps him out, gently enough. “I don’t know what exactly you saw, I can’t look at myself that way. But your parasites and the Eater. . . they’re only distantly related. Like some single-celled organism that lives in a puddle is related to humans, maybe. You have an infection, but you’re still, essentially, yourself.”

“Myself. . . “ Pete mutters. Thinks of the terrible purity.

“Yourself," Bob confirms. "Capable of moral reasoning. Able of making your own decisions.”

Pete looks at his hands, remembers dreams, nightmares. Fire and teeth.

“Speaking of,” Bob says suddenly, breezily. “You can probably hold out a little while longer, but at some point your little brain squatters will start chewing holes into your thinkmeat.”

Pete looks up, jarred.

Bob regards him calmly from across the table. “You know that, of course. And you know that Mhari went to a lot of trouble to source you some. . . _ethical_ blood. Maybe don’t let it go to waste?”

For a moment Pete is too shocked at the change in tone, in tack, to react. Then anger starts to percolate. He welcomes it.

“There _is_ a way out for me, you know,” he says. “I’m not going to be part of Monster Club.”

“Yeah, well. It’s one of those things. If you _want_ to be part of Monster Club, you shouldn’t _be_ part of Monster Club. You don’t want to be, so I’m afraid you’re in. Sorry, but that's how it works. And I do mean that, I _am_ sorry.”

“What – No, I mean,” Pete sputters.“Fuck. Seriously. What are you saying? It’s. . . what, it’s _okay?_ As long as we feel properly bad afterwards?”

Suddenly it is Bob who is furious. “It’s _not_ okay! It’ll _never_ be _okay_! – But there’s a fucking war on, in case you hadn’t noticed, and you’re. . . not a nuke, maybe, but let's say a grenade launcher. Potentially, at least. And our arsenal is mostly sticks and knives, in case that, too, has escaped your notice.”

Pete sits back, numb with disbelief. “You’re trying to recruit me.”

Bob makes a ‘what can you do’ face, mouth thin with self-loathing. “I recruited you years ago. As I said, sorry 'bout that. But you’re ours now, which makes you a resource, and we can’t afford to waste those. - Or let them waste themselves, for that matter.”

Pete stares at him: old friend, new-found fellow abomination. First and foremost: Laundry agent.

He suddenly feels very foolish.

“I’m not made to be a soldier,” he tries, eventually.

Bob laughs, a sound close to a sob. “You think _I_ am?”

“Or a sorcerer.”

“The basics are easy enough. Being a nerd is helpful but not required. And anyway, even without leet skillz you’re stronger, faster, a thousand times _less fragile_ than a baseline human. There’s always a use for that.”

Pete stares at the table; longs for the salt shaker.

Bob pulls something from the pocket of his hoodie and pushes it across the table.

“Sandy wants you to have this. Mhari wouldn’t take it.”

It’s the small, framed picture of Sandy and Jess that used to live on Pete’s desk.

“Historically speaking. . .” Bob says, slowly, “I haven’t. . . always been terribly great at getting what Mhari is about. At a guess, though, she didn’t want to remind you that you have something to live for.”

The faces in the picture blur and clear as tears collect and fall from Pete’s eyes.

“Mhari thinks I should kill myself,” Pete says, after a moment. “I think she’s trying to be kind.”

“Let’s say she wants you to feel that you have the option.”

“And you don’t.” Pete discovers, with mild surprise, that he is still angry.

Bob is silent for a while. When he starts to speak again his voice is low, measured.

“You know what’s going on out there. You know. . . enough, about what’s coming. You may not be as familiar with what _exactly_ we can throw into the ring, but you must’ve gathered that, by and large, we. are. _fucked_.

“You know what that means for the world. For the _humans_. Other sentients, too. They’re going to die, Pete. Die, and worse. Sandy, the kid. Everybody. And I’m not going to insult you by telling you that you’re going to make a decisive difference.”

Bob pauses, needing a respite from his own litany or wanting to give it a moment to sink in.

“If that is your pitch for going on as. . . _this_, it needs work,” Pete mutters. He feels faint.

“That wasn’t my pitch. That’s just the facts. My pitch is this: responsibility is a choice you _keep making_. If something is worth fighting for. . . you just fucking _. . . keep fighting_."

Pete’s mind, unasked, conjures up an image of Sandy and Jess in the rubble of London, in a tube station turned bomb shelter, cowering in some dark corner as large shapes loom, shapes that are shadowy but human.

That is not how it is going to be.

“This isn’t about. . . about going up with nothing but my fists against a bloke twice my size who wants to, to gun down my family!” Pete spits, hotly. “This isn’t about _fighting!_ This is. . . premeditated, state-sanctioned – _state-facilitated_ murder!” He takes a deep breath; tries to calm down. “There isn’t a battlefield here. The people I’d be killing aren’t the enemy. – Not that I’m particularly happy about killing in actual combat,” he adds, an afterthought that feels important.

“You’re right,” Bob says, after a pause. “This isn’t a battle. It’s a fucking Trolley Problem. On the one track there’s most of humanity. On the other, a random stranger – likely someone not too nice, who’s made at least one criminally stupid decision. Who do you try to save?”

“Ah. Utilitarianism. You do know that I’m practically required to be a deontologist, don’t you?”

"[Deo-what-now](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deontological_ethics)? Thought you were a Christian.”

Sometimes it’s hard to believe that Bob is married to someone who holds a PhD in philosophy.

“Okay. . ." Pete sighs, deeply weary. "Even just sticking with utilitarian ethics. . . It’s not a single stranger on that second track. It’s hundreds, because that train won’t stop until I step into sunlight. – Are there more people on the other track? Yes, probably, if you’re right and that’s really all of humanity there. But you also said it’s quite unclear if killing the people on the one track will save even a single person on the other, not least because the entire rail network is built on a clifftop that’s about to drop into the sea.”

Pete notes that he has slipped into lecture mode, and there’s comfort in that: it’s not sermon mode but close enough.

Bob sits watching; listening. Waiting for Pete to reach some foregone conclusion.

“Well. Okay,” Pete concedes. “You weren’t entirely wrong, with what you said about responsibility. Making choices. Maybe trying to save those people _does_ matter - even if it is just for a few minutes. Maybe that _is_ a decision I have to make, maybe it's the _decision_ that matters, even if it makes no practical difference at all, in the end.”

Something happens to Bob’s face, here: a minute hardening, a mustering of stubborn, hopeless determination.

_What, _thinks Pete. And, _Oh. Dear God._

For the third time in an hour he feels as if he is seeing Bob for the very first time.

He marvels how he could miss it; how for all this time it's been hidden by bureaucracy and procedure, by Bob's weary, routine professionalism.

He has to spell it out now. “That’s what you mean, when you speak about fighting. You’re _not_ a utilitarian. You believe in picking a side; making a choice and _sticking with it_ \- no matter what." He pauses, shudders. "_No matter what._ Even if there's no hope at all. Because it’s _the right thing to do_.”

Bob looks Pete in the eyes, with an intensity that Pete has never seen in him. “Can you say that it isn’t?”

Pete stares back at him.

“Some people," he ventures, "would say that if saving people involves setting up a system for _feeding_ on them, we’ve already lost what we’re trying to save.”

It’s a good argument, but Pete notes even as he makes it that it is almost entirely beside the point.

“_Some_ people?” Bob’s eyes bore into Pete’s.

Pete can do intense, too. “Can _you_ say that what we –” he considers verbs carefully, chooses: “– _are . . ._ doesn’t feel . . . _evil_?”

Bob’s expression is unreadable.

An Old Testament silence stretches.

Pete looks back at the picture on the table.

“Human life is incommensurate,” Pete says. “I do believe that. If I could save a billion by killing just one. . . killing that one would be no less wrong.” He looks up at Bob, who is frowning at him from the other side of the table. “Outside of a philosophy class or a church that can be. . . hard to maintain. Doesn’t mean that it’s wrong.”

Bob’s frown grows deeper. “So, what: we turn the other cheek as horrors from beyond space-time gobble up all life on Earth?”

Pete looks at the picture again. “No. I can’t believe that that is. . . God’s will.”

It feels strange to say it. For all his professed faith, he has never been one to make pronouncements on the volition of an entity that is surely so far beyond human understanding as to be, for most intents and purposes, an abstraction.

He studies the smiling faces. “Any calculus is wrong. Can only ever be wrong. But there are situations, yes, in which I would choose the many, or even the few, over the one. Where maybe it isn’t the _right thing_ to kill, but certainly the lesser wrong.”

He pulls the photo closer, regards it silently. Then he turns it face-down.

“You said you wouldn’t tell me that I could make a difference but you bring me this picture. You’re asking me to become a murderer, not to save them, but. . . for the _idea_ of them.”

Bob exhales, exasperated. “I’m asking you to be _useful_. We can’t choose to be human. We _can_ choose to be useful.”

The thought comes unbidden, tangential at best, the product of calculations almost entirely subconscious: _And maybe_ _ – just maybe – _ _ if I’m _ useful enough – _if, at some point, _ _ the PM _ _should _ _decide _ _to hold his strong, eldritch hand over the_ _ families of key personnel . . . _ _Jess and Sandy may get to be on whatever lifeboat we manage to find or build. . ._

He is disgusted with himself – grateful that Bob hasn’t pulled that particular card; not at all sure if, given the chance, he would be able to refuse.

Realisation rises as a sudden obstruction in his throat. “Sandy will leave me._ I _will have to leave _her_. Them. - I’ll never see Jess again.” He pushes the words out as if that could remove the blockage, let him breathe again.

Has he decided, then? He doesn’t know. He stares at the blank back of the picture frame. When he looks up, Bob is watching him with intense compassion, and again regret.

“I haven’t decided,” Pete says, stubborn.

Bob doesn’t respond

“I need you to leave now. Please.”

Bob watches him a moment longer; says, “Okay.”

Politeness is a reflex, too, so Pete gets up as Bob does, and walks him – two, three steps – to the door. Bob’s hand is on the doorknob when Pete says, “No matter how I decide, tell Mhari not to bother finding me any more ‘ethical’ blood.”

Bob gives him a questioning glance.

“Any guilt I share in, I’m gonna share in fully,” Pete explains.

Bob scrutinises him. Then he nods. “If it’s any help,” he says, “you’ve worked for this government for months. You’re part of the system – whether you drink the blood or not.”

Pete snorts, feels like crying. “Is that what you tell yourself after you’ve eaten?” He regrets the low blow immediately.

Bob doesn’t even wince.

Pete doesn’t apologise, and neither does Bob.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I accidentally posted this end note in chapter 1 when really it should have been here, so here it is again:
> 
> I think it‘s safe to assume that Pete, having known Bob well before he knew about his code name wouldn‘t use it in private conversations; he‘d be using Bob‘s real name. Please feel free to imagine whatever name you think might be Bob‘s actual name whenever you see Pete calling him “Bob“ here. I will deal properly with the name issue in another fic, where Bob’s identity will be a central plot point.


	3. National Security

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Another kind of horror.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If the kid's age seems wrong to you, please see the story notes on page 1.
> 
> Oh yeah, and I'm officially working on a fourth chapter/scene in this sequence now! Whoops. (It will be a while, though, because I really do have more important writing projects going on, including a much more promising Laundry fic.)

Great College Street, London. A woman is waiting under the trees overhanging the wall of Westminster College Gardens, her gaze fixed on a row of Georgian terraces opposite, recently remodeled into a single building. The new main entrance is guarded by a pair of armed police officers.

After a while, one of the policemen approaches.

“Ma’am?”

She doesn’t react.

“Excuse me. Ma’am.”

Hostile: “What.”

“You’re going to have to move.”

“I’m waiting for someone.”

“You can wait down the street.”

She glances at him. “My husband is in there.”

“You’ve been here half an hour. Why don’t you give him a call?”

“He doesn’t take my calls.” Her eyes are searching the windows again. “I’m not sure he still uses that phone.”

The officer studies her, taking in the shadows under her eyes. He softens, slightly.

“Listen. This is a Protected Site under SOCPA and the Terrorism Act of 2006. It’s not _quite_ illegal to just stand where you’re standing right now, but. . . loitering is frowned upon. Strongly. Just move along, will you?”

She is still looking up at the windows. Then she turns a pleading face to the officer. “We have a little daughter, you see? She’s two.”

“Just move a little further down the street, please.”

“. . . Can you call Mo O’Brien, Dr. Dominique O’Brien for me, please?”

“I don’t know who that is.”

“Yes you do, she’s been on TV.“

“I’m sorry. We’re not the front desk for Q Division.”

“See? You do know her. – Please. I’d call her myself, but she doesn’t answer my calls either.”

“Listen, ma’am, I’m sorry, but we can’t help you. And you need to move. Now.”

*

“Hello again, officer.”

He sighs. “You brought a placard. Bad idea. No political demonstrations here.”

“It’s a name. Not a political slogan. My husband’s name.” She pulls herself up defiantly: “Although for the record, I do not approve of the abrogation of civil rights represented by Mr. Everyman’s legal initiatives.”

“I must ask you to leave immediately.”

“What happens if I don’t?”

“We’d have to arrest you. The Civil Contingencies Act is still in effect, as I’m sure you’re aware.”

She is still for a moment. Then, fey: “My husband works for them, you know. . . Or maybe he doesn’t, now. He might be dead, for all I know. . . I mean, I hope they’d still. . . tell me about that. But who knows. . . Who knows, now.”

“I’m sorry. This really isn’t the place to deal with your marriage issues.”

“You can learn some rather interesting things when your husband works for Q Division.” Her face sharpens into challenge, suddenly. “Are you sure that you’d know _how_ to arrest me?”

The officer sighs again. “We’re warded. And you’re bluffing. Please. Leave. I really don’t want to arrest you.”

*

A small conference room. Sandy is pacing nervously in the narrow space between the table and the wall when the door opens.

“Sandy. Hey.”

“. . . You.”

“I know I’m not who you asked to see. . .”

She emanates silent fury.

“The police tell me you’ve been making yourself a nuisance for three days now. Good thing someone saw your sign and told Mo. She sent me.”

“This is _your_ fault.”

“Yeah. It is.”

“Take me to Pete.”

“I’m sorry. He’s not here. Not in London, that is. They've sent him on a training course.”

Her laugh is bitter. “More brainwashing? Haven’t you done enough?”

“Now c’mon. Sandy –”

“He wrote me this ridiculous letter. Like a suicide note. Like he was saying goodbye forever. . . I warned him, you know. Last year, when he finally told me what you do. What _he’d_ been doing, since 2013. I told him that your world would swallow him up. - And now it has.”

“Sandy. I’m sorry –”

“You’re like a, a _cult_! You grab a person and tell them you know the Real Truth of the universe, you dangle this hidden world in front of them, where everything _matters_ so much more –”

“Hey! I could say much the same about Christianity –“

“- you tell them they can’t talk to anyone on the outside –“

“- only _you_ get started much earlier, you snatch ‘em right out of the cradle!”

“- you _make it_ so they can’t talk to anyone on the outside – ”

“This is a secret intelligence organisation, Sandy. We deal with matters of national security. Secrecy kinda comes with the territory.”

“Oh for. . . Do you even _listen_ to yourself?!”

“Sandy. You didn’t come here to argue about politics with me, did you?”

“What ‘nation’ is this that you think you’re protecting? Cause it doesn’t look like the one in which I grew up. Nor one in which I want to raise my child.”

“. . . I don’t set policy, Sandy. The Laundry doesn’t set policy.”

She looks at him like a teacher who can’t believe quite how asinine an answer a formerly promising student just gave her. Then, almost wistfully: “We really haven’t seen much of Mo and you, these past few years. Maybe we _should_ have argued about politics more. I always just. . . _assumed_ we were more or less on the same page. On politics, at least. Silly me, hm?”

“Sandy. Things are sort of busy here right now, and there’s stuff I need to say –”

“What are you doing to him? What is that ‘training course’?”

“Sandy. . . Pete loves you. He loves Jess. That hasn’t changed. That won’t change. Take my word on that. If he’s decided to cut ties that’s because it’s. . . fundamentally _not safe_, for you or the kid, to be around him now. And it isn’t. You need to believe me on that, too.”

“What does that even mean? No, don’t say anything, I know it’ll be a non-answer.”

“– And no more protests in front of the building. We got them to turn a blind eye this time, but our influence only goes so far. Next time they really _will_ arrest you. Jess needs you. Don’t do anything stupid.”

She looks at him with disbelief; with profound disgust. “You’re _threatening_ me?”

“No, I’m warning you.”

Silence stretches for a long time.

Eventually: “I need to pick up Jess. I understand I’m not under arrest. So, can I leave?”

“Any time.”

He steps aside, holds the door for her, accompanies her through the confusing warren of impressively refurbished corridors and stairways. In the lobby he speaks once more.

“Sandy. I know it’s not my place but. . . it might be a good idea not to get a divorce.”

She stares at him. He grimaces.

“There may be situations where being the family of a Laundry agent might. . . help. Even if the marriage only exists on paper.”

“. . . _Situations_.”

He shrugs, helplessly. “Just saying. Keep your options open. If you can.”

She scoffs. Pushes past his awkward attempt to open a last door for her. She shivers in the sunlight as she walks away from the building with quick steps.


End file.
